Brodsky in Arkhangelsk AN EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL Brodsky in Arkhangelsk Iosif Brodsky is not free. The young Soviet poet, despite seemingly authoritative reports to the contrary, remains restricted to the Arkhangelsk region in...
...Early this summer he was permitted to go to Leningrad for five days to visit his parents...
...Upon their completion they were to be published immediately and used as proof against the charge that he is a "parasite...
...He called to say that the Brodsky case was well-known in the Soviet Union, that one heard numerous conflicting rumors there about his status, but that at the recently concluded Dartmouth Conferences in Leningrad he had been assured Brodsky was back home and free...
...In the past three weeks we have been in contact with two different persons possessing intimate knowledge of Brodsky's present situation...
...We hope, too, that the other members of the intellectual community who make up the bulk of this magazine's readership will join them...
...At the moment, however, Iosif Brodsky is in the Arkhangelsk region...
...Unhappily, our instinct has proved more accurate than the previously available facts...
...They are also very much dismayed at the false reports of his freedom circulating in the West...
...When "The Trial" was published, we were particularly struck by the large number of notes and phone calls registering indignation that we received from writers, playwrights and poets who normally have little interest in politics...
...The first seemingly authoritative report of Brodsky's whereabouts came to us early in September from George Feifer, a young Soviet affairs specialist who has spent a good deal of time in the USSR...
...he is technically in what might best be described as confinement...
...Yet being skeptical, we noted in the Between Issues column of that number: " at this writing we have not been able to locate anyone who has seen him or spoken with him...
...In a letter written three weeks ago, Brodsky said that his only wish now was to take a bus ride in a big city...
...But he returned both manuscripts, explaining that he was too ill to tackle them...
...Friedrich Duerrenmatt was quoted in the September Encounter as having been told the same thing in Moscow...
...Should Brodsky actually be freed, arrangements have been made for news of his release to reach here in a matter of days after it occurs...
...A collection was made for the purchase of the radio, to which at least one American we know contributed, and it has been sent to him...
...Now that the first snow has fallen in the Soviet Union and the northern region is difficult to reach, those close to Brodsky are fearful for his future...
...Thus we asked Feifer to do the article, "Brodsky: Reactions in Moscow," that appeared in the September 14 New Leader...
...He is not working on a State farm and he is not a prisoner in the formal sense...
...One of them returned from the Soviet Union only two weeks ago and lived among the poet's closest friends, including many who visited him...
...It had been thought that once the details of his trial became known, protests from the free world, added to the unusual number of pleas from prominent Soviet literary personalities, would bring about his release...
...He lives in a khata, a small peasant house, with no heat, no electricity, no running water...
...The young Soviet poet, despite seemingly authoritative reports to the contrary, remains restricted to the Arkhangelsk region in the Soviet north...
...Still, it is not too late to act...
...But efforts to substantiate these stories before publication of "The Trial of Iosif Brodsky" in the August 31 New Leader—which continues to be the subject of newspaper and magazine articles and editorials around the nation—only uncovered additional contradictory accounts...
...Two months ago, even as we were -having the smuggled-out transcript of the bizarre Leningrad proceedings against Brodsky translated, rumors began reaching us that he had been released...
...Friends who have been visiting him say he is extremely depressed and is not doing any work at all...
...one by the poet Bella Akhmadulina, the other by a leading publishing house...
...Although sentenced to five years at hard labor as well as exile, Brodsky is seriously ill, suffering from a heart ailment, and Soviet doctors have declared that he must not do any physical work...
...Another dream of his life, he said, was to have a transistor radio...
...Two manuscripts were sent to Brodsky for translation...
...We hope they will take the trouble now to make their feelings known to Chairman Khrushchev...
Vol. 47 • October 1964 • No. 21
